LITMIR.BIZ

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are we going to get the money for the civic centre bid?’

      ‘Overdraft for some of it,’ said Max. ‘I’ll put my place on the market.’

      ‘I’ll put mine on,’ Evie said with a sigh. ‘We’re still going to come up short.’

      ‘Business loan,’ said Max bleakly. ‘Here, before I forget.’ He fished in his pocket and pulled out something small and round and silver-coloured, those bits of it that weren’t a dazzling, glittering blue. It was a sapphire ring the size of Texas. Evie didn’t understand. ‘My mother wants you to have this as a memento of our engagement. Something about payment for your trouble.’ He held it out towards her.

      ‘No.’ Evie took a hasty step back. ‘Whatever your mother’s opinions are, just … no. I’m all for forgetting we were ever engaged.’

      ‘I told her you’d say that.’ Max reached for her right hand and slipped it swiftly on her middle finger. Not her ring finger, not even the proper hand. ‘She seems to think I owe you a ring. That we were engaged, however briefly, and that you deserve some kind of compensation. Wear it. Flog it. I don’t care. Just take it. I’m a man in search of family harmony and my mother wants you to have it.’

      ‘I don’t want it,’ muttered Evie, tugging the ring off just as swiftly as it had gone on. It was too bulky anyway. Too much the reminder of bad decisions too hastily made. ‘Please, Max. Just give it back to her. Tell her I don’t want it.’

      But Max’s attention had drifted to a point just over her shoulder, his eyes narrowing fast, and Evie knew, even before she looked over her shoulder, that Logan was heading their way. ‘Take it,’ she said, trying to push the ring into Max’s hand, only he wasn’t having it, and then Logan was upon them and Max automatically moved to make room for him.

      ‘Change of heart?’ murmured Logan, looking at the ring, and shock flared deep in his eyes; right before those same eyes turned bitter and then carefully blank.

      ‘This isn’t what it looks like.’ Max’s words came low and fast. ‘It’s not an engagement ring. We’re not engaged. The wedding’s off and it’s staying off. You know that.’

      ‘Where’d you get the ring?’ asked Logan, and didn’t wait for Max’s answer. ‘She give it to you? Our mother? She tell you to give it to Evangeline?’

      ‘Yes.’ Max looked uneasy. Evie was uneasy.

      ‘Take it,’ said Evie urgently. ‘I don’t want it. Would someone please just take it back?’

      But Logan wanted no part of it. He knew that stone, the ocean-reef-blue of it. He’d seen it before. He looked towards the small crowd of people in the adjoining room. Those who hadn’t drifted out onto the patio or into the gardens and his mother was one of them. What was she doing? What the hell was she thinking giving Evie this particular ring? She had that look about her; the one that said I’m worried about you and I’m scared of what you’ll do and he wished to hell she’d just stop looking at him like that! Look to her own flaws, for once, and not only to his.

      ‘Logan?’ said Evie, and put her hand to his forearm to draw his attention, and something twisted deep in his gut. ‘Logan, what’s wrong?’

      ‘Nothing.’

      ‘Bull,’ she snapped, calling his bluff. ‘You’re hurt.’

      ‘No. It’s her ring. What do I care what she does with it?’

      ‘Logan, who gave your mother this ring?’ Evie asked tightly.

      But Logan refused to answer her.

      ‘It’s the one your father gave her, isn’t it?’ said Evie.

      ‘No,’ said Max.

      ‘Doesn’t matter.’ He wouldn’t let it matter.

      ‘Logan, this can’t be that ring,’ continued Max doggedly. ‘She wouldn’t do that.’

      But she had.

      Max wouldn’t recognise it; she’d never worn it in front of him. Different lifetime. Different family. Caroline Carmichael had got it right the second time round. A gentle, supportive husband and a loving, well-balanced child.

      Max thought their mother was wonderful.

      And then the bitter blackness spewed forth, and, for the second time that day, Logan let it engulf him.

      ‘She likes to remind me of him whenever she thinks I’ve gone too far.’ He sought Evangeline’s gaze. Evangeline in the midnight-blue gown that accentuated her flawless skin and slender curves. The same skin he’d put mouth to not so long ago. The same curves he wanted to caress again with an intensity that bordered on obsession. ‘Have I gone too far, Evangeline?’

      ‘No,’ she said slowly as her fist clenched around the ring. ‘It’s not you who’s gone too far.’

      And before Logan had any notion of what she was about to do, Evie twirled and flung his mother’s ring into the shadowy garden, into the shrubbery far, far away.

      The pregnant silence that followed threatened to engulf them all.

      ‘Good arm,’ said Max finally.

      ‘It was given to me,’ she said raggedly. ‘And I’ve done what I wanted with it. No one needs that kind of reminder in their life. No one.’

      He couldn’t cope. Logan stared at her, his every defence shattered, and something passed between them, something dark and sticky and breathtakingly savage. He didn’t cope well with emotion; his mother was right. Sometimes his feelings just got too big for him to hold.

      ‘Excuse me,’ he muttered, before he did something unforgivable like drag her from the room, lock her in his arms and never let her go. ‘Excuse me, I have to go.’

      Evie watched him leave, her heart so full of lead she was surprised she was still standing up. ‘I did the wrong thing,’ she whispered to Max. ‘Said the wrong thing.’

      ‘No,’ said Max and his arms came around her comfortingly, urging her to turn and focus her stricken gaze on something other than the door Logan had just exited through. ‘You did exactly the right thing. He’s feeling too vulnerable, that’s all. He never stays when he gets that way.’

      Evie didn’t want to stay either. Not that she wanted to run after Logan, because she didn’t. Assuming she even caught up with him, what would she say? How was she supposed to heal hurts inflicted so long ago? If they hadn’t healed by now, chances were they never would.

      ‘Max, may we leave early too?’ she asked shakily. ‘I’ve had enough. I really have.’ Of the assault on her senses and on her mind. Of the impossible situations that just kept coming, and of the helplessness she felt in the face of this family’s hidden pain. ‘I want to go upstairs and pack, then call a taxi.’

      ‘Where do you want to go?’ Max’s usually laughing brown eyes were dark with concern.

      ‘Back to Sydney,’ she said. ‘Away from here. I want to go home.’

CHAPTER FIVE

      WALKING away from Logan that Saturday night at the cocktail party wasn’t the hardest thing Evie had ever done. Staying sane the following week was the hardest thing she’d ever done. Sane when Max looked at her sideways and kept his mouth firmly shut. Sane as she worked on project proposals and tried not to wonder what Logan was doing and what he was thinking, and whether she’d ever see him again.

      How she could have handled things better.

      What she might have done to make Logan stay.

      ‘What?’ she demanded in exasperation as Max walked into her office unannounced for about the tenth

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